Though he was bailed to a rehabilitation residency, The Cottage, it’s the kind of place he would’ve chosen to be even if he hadn’t been court-ordered there.
“I’m not here just to get out of jail, it’s because I’m sick of that life, too, so I want to change my whole life,” he said.
“Before I started getting in trouble, I’d always worked. I just want to go back to working.”
Brad found himself in a cycle of addiction, drug trafficking and firearms manufacturing, which was forming an undesirable downward pattern.
Tired of his tainted history repeating itself and winding up incarcerated over and again, he applied for bail during his third prison stay.
He was denied.
So he tried again.
And again, he was denied.
From there, he went to the Supreme Court, which granted him bail to the Shepparton rehabilitation space.
“It was unlikely for me to even get here, but I got here eventually, so I decided to approach it with open arms and see what we can make of it,” Brad said.
He’s been in residency for six weeks now; halfway through his stay.
He says things are going well for him.
“This is my first rehab. It’s different than what I expected, but it’s good,” Brad said.
“I want to make positive changes in my life, so this gives me a lot of avenues to do that.
“It exposes you to a lot of different stuff that you wouldn’t think to try on your own.”
After the first four weeks, stage one, residents enter stage two.
Usually, that means they can leave the facility unaccompanied for short stints, but Brad’s bail conditions don’t afford him that freedom just yet.
He can, however, leave with a staff member to run essential errands or partake in group activities.
He said he would soon apply for his bail conditions to be changed, as he’s missed simple things like going for walks.
“The other day, me and a few of the other boys went and played golf — rather unsuccessfully, turns out we’re not gonna be on the Australian tour any time soon — but we got out of the house for the afternoon, so stuff like that is good to do,” he said.
“It gets you out and doing a bit of normal stuff again rather than what we have in the past, I guess.”
Alas, life is not all birdies and buoyancy, and back at The Cottage there are chores to be done.
It’s another way to help residents get back on par with ‘normal’ domesticated life.
“It’s a good structure. It gets everyone out of bed and gives them something to do. The days fly actually, they really go quickly here,” Brad said.
“You get up, do check-in for about an hour, do our chores, clean the houses, then after that we have classes here with one of the people.
“We look at things to do with addiction, behaviour and the psychological side of it.
“We do that for an hour, hour-and-a-half, then there’s a bit of free time in the arvo and then it’s time to cook dinner.
“We have two cooking teams.”
Brad has the responsibility of being team leader of one of the cooking teams.
The teams take turns to prepare, cook and clean up.
“The food’s good, but it depends who’s cooking,” he laughed, hinting there might be a bit of friendly competition in the kitchen between chefs.
Maybe when Brad arrives home in Warrnambool early December, he will be assigned roast turkey lunch duties for the 25th.
“I’m looking forward to getting home around Christmas and then getting back into work after Christmas,” he said.
The former truck driver and tyre fitter said he had a mate who owned an automotive shop in his home town who had started looking out for jobs for him ahead of his anticipated return.
∎ For more information on The Cottage, visit thecottage.org.au
∎ If you’re struggling with addiction, call DirectLine 24 hours a day, seven days a week on 1800 888 236
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